Reduced Reaction Mechanisms for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): Isoparaffinic Alcohol-to-Jet Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (AtJ-SPK) and Its Blends with Jet A

Abstract

Alcohol-to-Jet Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (AtJ-SPK), an approved sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by blending with conventional Jet A fuel, has recently been experimentally studied, and detailed mechanisms have been developed to describe its combustion behavior. The present study aims to develop reduced mechanisms of AtJ-SPK and its blends with Jet A for high-fidelity and computationally affordable computational fluid dynamics. Specifically, two reduced mechanisms were developed for pure AtJ-SPK and its blends with Jet A from LLNL-AtJ-SPK [Richter et al. Combust. Flame 2022, 240, 111994] and POLIMI detailed mechanisms [Ranzi et al. Prog. Energy Combust. Sci. 2012, 38 (4), 468–501], respectively, using a combined reduction method. The reduced mechanisms can achieve 80%/92.4% and 92%/90% reductions of the species/reaction numbers, respectively, compared with those of the master detailed mechanisms. The developed reduced mechanisms were further validated under various conditions by comparing the predicted ignition delay times, laminar flame speeds, and temporal/spatial profiles with those predicted using the master detailed mechanisms as well as experimental data. Finally, the computational cost comparison in the two-dimensional direct numerical simulation demonstrated that the developed reduced mechanisms can impressively accelerate the calculation speed by more than 5000 and 529 times, respectively.

Past, Present and Future: A Role for Liquid Biofuels in Transitioning to Net Zero?

“…The top four technologies with the highest permitted blending limits use chemical and thermochemical processes (Table 2, data from [19]). The Alcohol-to-Jet product takes alcohols derived by microbial fermentation of cellulosic biomass and converts the alcohols via chemical treatments [33]. Other biotechnological processes, including transforming sugars to hydrocarbons and the conversion of microalgal triglycerides into fuels, are established but have much lower permitted blending levels, 5% -10% [18].…”